Table No. 21

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Tennyson

There are times when one has break the narrative and the flow, and come up with something which he missed in his writing, something which deserved to be there, but faded into the void even before threatening to make an impact. This would need a flashback and some scratching of the memories, and here comes one movie which was left out thinking that it was released in 2012 while remembering the dates from February when this blog was started, but actually the date was 4th January 2013 – but considering how good a movie it is, there is the need for it to be present here, and here I add this one to the middle of the others, almost like inserting the past into the present even as 2013 as a whole could be considered the present. This can be more considered as a guest, or a former tenant who couldn’t stay in the house enough to make it known to the neighbours and the people of the town or village. Well, Table No. 21 is much more than a simple tenant – it is more of an owner of its own genre, something which would be revealed more as we progress. Welcome to the group, forgotten movie – for you are to be remembered in this post with a status as good as the others, as belonging to the present, for you deserve it; this is more of a honorary status.

I am being lenient on this one considering my ignorance which was inflicted upon this so brutally, even as the brutality affects not even Mickey Mouse. The question would be more like how much brutal this movie can be – and how cruel the game master can be. Well, this is about a game, and that much should be certain for everyone who has read something about the movie. The unemployed couple Vivaan (Rajeev Khandelwal) and Siya (Tena Desae) gets a chance to visit Fiji. To add to the glory of visiting the beautiful islands, it is their wedding anniversary. But all the beauty tends to take a wrong turn as they encounter Mr. Khan (Paresh Rawal), the owner of the resort who invites the couple to take part in a live game show named Table No. 21 which offers a breath-taking amount of 10 million Fijian Dollars as the prize money – something which would convert to crores of rupees. The rules are simple – a total of eight questions will be asked regarding their personal life for which they have to answer truthfully with an yes or no, and have to do the task assigned to each question. They are not allowed to quit in the middle of the game, and neither can they skip a question or its related task. Their mobiles are taken away and are surrounded by cameras and henchmen.

The questions first seem very easy to answer and the confidence level reaches new heights for the couple, as if they were made for this game and all their financial needs are soon to be met. Their doubts about this is an idea to make fun of them, slowly vanishes. The first question about their love and the task to kiss in public was of no trouble. The question concerning them knowing each other and the task of Siya eating non-vegetarian is also of not too much difficulty. The question concerning manipulating others and the task of instant manipulation creates no tension even if it leads to slight suspicions which they leave behind thinking about the huge amount of money which awaited them. Then comes the difficult parts, the need for blood which is the first dangerous and life threatening situation of the game, as Vivaan answers he would go to any extent to save his love – the point is that here he has to fight his tendency to faint at seeing blood to save her by filling a bottle full of his blood and use it as a key to unlock a glass cage short of oxygen. Even in an unfamiliar territory, as the need had arisen, the task is completed right in time.

The question of love continues, and the task involves shaving Siya’s head to which they protest, but is brought back into the game by threatening, with the lady ending up with a shaved head. The next question is about domestic violence, and Siya is asked to return a slap she recieved from him with full force, a point when they realize that the master of the game knows more about them than they thought, even the most personal details. The task involving Vivaan vandalizing a random car puts him in trouble as he gets beaten up as well as getting almost caught by police, and what it does worse is when he asks help and thus breaks the rules landing his wife in trouble. He arrives in time to save his wife, but that is not the last of the troubles, as the game goes on, the situation becomes even more strange and horrible, and they realize that their past is being reminded in a horrid manner. But the true realization comes only the end, and it is where the game master is justified and the hidden truth of the past is revealed to the audience. But this revelation never overpowers the thrills and the social message, as the balance is successfully maintained. An another message could be said to be against the greed and never-ending avarice, the desire for easy money and also about the meaninglessness of reality shows.

Parwesh Rawal seems to have the movie working like a flawless machine with his performance as the game master. He is the most hospitable resort owner, the sadistic manipulator and a loving father, three in one. Even as he has the second personality during most of the movie and may be before the horrid twist happens to the game, there is no loss of the power of trio in himself. Rajeev Khandelwal does his character in a rightly truthful manner. There is no exaggeration of the personality and there is nothing unnecessary added to it; the simplicity in complexity attributed to the character is lesser only to that of the game master – he traverses from the inflictor or pain to the vulnerable one at the recieving end. Tena Desae as Siya – has blended in well from the beach, bikinis and love to fear, anxiety and absolute horror. From having a shaved head to being in one of the worst situations for a damsel in distress at a strip club, from the passionate and loyal lover to losing her character and trust, from the photogenic lady in bikini to the oppressor who became the oppressed, it is quite a powerful performance adding to the strength of the film. There is no flat, static character among these, for they have all gone through the much needed changes.

The movie rests on the three, and if we add the next two important characters, the whole suspense would be lost. As the clues, there is the college were these two met and fell in love and there is the case of ragging. There is no loss of intensity in that flashback story too. The bottomline of the movie is its message that ragging is not a joke, but a crime. The title of the movie comes from the article 21, on the protection of life and liberty. The message is as powerful as the movie, and the use of flashbacks has worked perfectly to suit the overall mood of the movie, and the whole game is more or less a recreation of their cruel deeds at the college as the seniors. Even the uneasy silence and the absence of descriptions in the movie makes an impact and the whole setup which leads to one powerful social message is the ultimate triumph of the movie. But, the message is not used as a propaganda. A joke is no joke that causes harm to others and having fun at the expense of others is both a sin and a crime – this is the best way it can be summarized. The injection of reality into unreality in a sincere manner as to create the feeling of truth – it is surely not something many horror movies desire to achieve and not something any popular horror movie has come up with so far.

The greatest advantage of this movie is that it surprises you – right from the beginning to end; almost every moment has a certain amount of unpredictability associated with it, sometimes with the twists of plot and sometimes with the performance of the cast. There are lesser moments when it would seem that this one has lost its gasoline, but then it comes up with an alternative fuel which takes over and makes this one run better. The biggest of the twist comes up with the social message which is the most striking element of the movie and how it is unveiled is a method of slow, step by step ignition leading to the big catastrophe of ultimate success. There was rarely a moment when the movie was not ahead of the audience, creating that element of spooky suspense, and by the end, one comes to know how much ahead it really is, in a world where the suspense horror movies never really got its due – suffering from a typical horror movie rights violation due to some too-natural or never-natural romantic love stories which never really deserved to be called movies; therefore this is your welcome break and not to be missed even for a chance to go to Mars and be imprisoned by the Martians virtually created by the lies of science which people adore and would never cease to believe.

Release date: 4th January 2013
Running time: 108 minutes
Directed by: Aditya Datt
Starring: Paresh Rawal, Tena Desae, Rajeev Khandelwal, Dhruv Ganesh

@ Cemetery Watch
✠The Vampire Bat.

3G

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Tennyson

The Vampire Bat’s desire for horror has been getting stronger and stronger every day. The procedure of watching Murder 3 actually accelerated it to the maximum and therefore 3G was not to be missed. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, The Cabin in the Woods, House at the End of the Street or The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia never came to the theatres here. There was no question of The Woman in Black. For Paranormal Activity 4, they might have had an early heart attack. But unfortunately, Piranha 3DD did arrive as pseudo-horror. The only hope was to adjust with the Resident Evil and the Underworld series as horror even as they could no longer fit into that category. This ridiculous attitude towards horror might be the worst thing about the theatres and malls around here, as they don’t really mind the local language horror movies, not checking if they are any good. At least 3G made it to most of the theatres around here, even if it is no material of Silent Hill quality. The silence of depression which every horror fan faces around here needs to be treated, and therefore, this review is going to be quite lenient – there will be no hard measures taken on this movie and it will be given a free pass in many departments.

“Wherever you go i am there: Gadha Jam” said Mohanlal in the 1989 Malayalam movie Vandanam. Here, it is a mobile phone which says the same. It is an advanced phone for a spirit to try and infect, with touch screen and 3G facility. The movie begins with a guy murdering his girlfriend stabbing her through the right eye right after proposing to her in an abandoned area. Then the screen shifts to a stylish opening credits shown in a very innovative way in the beginning. There is the mention of the billions of phone users in the world. It also talks about the large number of phantom calls which are received worldwide which cannot be traced. Here, these calls are related to spirits of the other world trying to connect to this world. That did sound a little overreaching for me, but that also gave a push both to the expectations and the skepticism. This is the beginning of an ambitious plot and we might be talking more about its ambiguity later, but for now lets get on with it.

The 3rd generation of mobile telecommunications technology makes way for Sheena (Sonal Chauhan) who comes out of the saline water of Fiji in a red bikini; and that much talked-about scene ends with a not-so-happy conversation with her lover Sam (Neil Nitin Mukesh). But all the minute problems are solved as he comes to Fiji to be with her, losing his mobile in the process and initiating the “Kaise Bataaoon” song. There are surely in love, but are always interrupted, first by Sam’s own hallucinations which makes him see demonic faces not only on others, but also as a ghost – something which interferes with their relationship. The second stage makes him near-possessed and almost makes him strangle Sheena in her bath tub and also to take his own life by hanging. Then the spirit seems to take over him completely. To add to it, there is a video of a girl getting murdered inside the phone while strange sights and voices happen on the outside. The attempt to get rid of the phone has already failed, as it came back from being deposited in the sea as well as being broken into pieces. That should have been expected when there are dead people involved.

Neil’s territory is divided into two, one of a passionate lover and the other of the possessed. His performance as the former is never under doubt and the as the latter is incredible at times and okay on the other occasions. One of those moments is when he is seen possessed over the bath tub of his lover and the other when he asks a priest, “Have you forgiven yourself?”. The moments are strange, but effective enough. There is also a scene of bloody murder which is strange, but still powered by his thrilling performance. Sonal has the supporting role, looking gorgeous and playing the character who hesitates to leave her lover despite of the haunting that happens around him and inside his mind. She never looks less than stunning throughout the movie. Her presence here only does the movie good, even though it is surely not for giving a big performance that she is there. I wouldn’t guess that people were expecting something else around here.

This movie is less of a thriller and more of a horror flick, and in that case, this one is far ahead of any of the movies in Bollywood. I would not deny that Murder 2 and Murder 3 were better in wholeness, but the fact remains that 3G better in parts. But, the problem is that this lack of wholeness makes this one inferior to the other two I mentioned. Still, the advantages of 3G includes its ability and its use of that ability to successfully generate the visual and audible fear supported by good use of sound effects & camera, in a much spookier way compared to its predecessors. The creepy environment is successfully created even in the presence of two of the best looking people on the screen, and the attention successfully shifts more to the horror elements than them. The fact that things get kind of absurd and fails to make much sense as a movie with its weaker logic still makes it good in parts. 3G certainly has its moments of horror glory, but there also those of extreme stupidity creating moments of unintentional comedy. This is more of a minor oasis in the desert of romantic comedies and mindless action for the starving horror fans in India.

There was a lot of scope for this movie, but the ghost who tries to be Miss India and a grown-up version of The Ring girl at the same time, along with the fluctuations in the story has left the audience with more to ask for. There is a certain absence of intellect as well as the presence of ambiguity throughout the movie, even as the first half rarely explains anything. The best not-so-hot, not-so-intimate scene in the movie still came in the first half, when our hero is playing a game of car race in a taxi in the mobile and with a crash in the game comes a car crash in real life, as they land in the hospital with the spirit mobile which is left unscratched. Well, watch it for Neil Nitin Mukesh’s depiction of two personalities, the possessed and the unpossessed, the dazzling beauty that is Sonal Chauhan and the interesting concept of horror which hasn’t been tried this effectively in Indian movies. There is also a message against porn in the movie, and the presence of a hidden message against the effect of technology in our lives, especially that of the mobile phones. I hope you can recollect that much remembered scene from The Ring when Samara crawls from the tv and kills Noah with fear. Nobody crawls out of the mobile though, as the ghost is both inside and outside; but keep that in mind.

The need for horror has reached its highest point right now. Unless, the multiplexes and regular theatres do not hesitate to show the bloody movies of International horror standards, there will be no satisfaction for the common horror fan. The movies like 3G, Murder 3 and Table No.21 might serve as satisfactory thrillers or sources of horror which might give a small, but certain amount of relief. If one thinks about Dracula 2012 3D in Malayalam, no lets just leave the literary works alone; for they are to be more classics than just horror and the vampire life would just be like a random Twilight unless the soul of the work makes it way to the screen. Well, how can you reach the heart even when you cut incredibly deep if there is none? How can you influence the brain if it is already frozen and unavailable? 3G doesn’t really appeal to the brain, but for the heart, it is another story. It won’t really matter how this one would turn out to be, but there will be no stopping the horror genre. If the best horror movies are brought to the theatres, that would be incredibly satisfying, or otherwise there is 3G.

Release date: 15th March 2013
Running time: 120 minutes (estimate)
Directed by: Sheershak Anand-Shantanu Ray Chibber
Starring: Neil Nitin Mukesh, Sonal Chauhan, Mrinalini Sharma, Asheesh Kapur

@ Cemetery Watch
✠The Vampire Bat.

Murder III

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Tennyson

The Vampire Bat has never been the fan of the original movie, Murder – but he was forced to change that one opinion to think about following the series with Murder 2. That made sure that this was going to be a series which has the worst in the beginning itself. It doesn’t matter how good people might think it was, it was never a good copy from Hollywood. The second was more close to glory as Prashant Narayanan came up with one of the best performances witnessed for such a long time. It was both gruesome and awesome at the same time. Then, the question would be about Murder 3 right now and the answer might be somewhere in between the first and the second of the series. It could never rise upto the second, but still creates a better impact than the first. It is supposed to be the remake of the Colombian thriller The Hidden Face, but at no point does it gives a feeling that it does not belong to this part of the world, for it has been changed well enough. It might still seem to defy logic, but that is something which is to be forgiven to attain the maximum effect of the needed horror.

Any disappointment about the movie has to be left to the first half, which is a little strange – it has a photographer who has turned alcholic after losing his girlfriend, along with his new girlfriend. He is a young man who just lost his future wife and has brought another one out of nowhere; not really inappropriate for the Murder series, but still something which tells the viewer a little about the protagonist, the new-age Icarus whose interests are as unlimited as his ambitions. He has his wings, but the question might be about the path through which he is flying, and also about his other interests while moving so close to that fire-starter who can burn more than just a few things of wax. He might have to think again about all these, and it is doubtful when he will have the opportunity to do so. Meanwhile, his first girlfriend is more of the one who sacrifices her own interests. Now that would make the question of her leaving him obsolete. That is a fact which would keep the cops on his tail, investigating about his hands in her disappearance. But knowing them as a loving couple, not many would doubt his involvement in her absence.

His second girlfriend is more of a Lady Icarus, from one angle, even as she is shown more as a sympathizer in the first half. There is no point where one can be sure about this one character though. She is not really a static character, but still not someone whos progress can be easily traced. There are events happening all around, indicating the presence of some supernatural force and a mystery that surrounds the protagonist. Most of it just seem to happen just for the sake of frightening, until most of the twists and further explanations are done in the second half of the movie. It brings light to what lies inside the shadows of a world which looks too simple from outside. It brings two worlds and combine them into one; there is one inside the mirror and the other outside; both human, one free and the other imprisoned – but the souls of both might be in their own prison. One of them is not seen and the other is there for everyone to see. A reversal of roles is a possibility which is attempted soon enough, what lies beneath the depths of the hearts of two women and one man is difficult to know.

The whole story revolves around the three people and the love triangle. While the first half almost made a mess of it with a kind of “romantic horror” or “horror romance” which was neither here nor there, the relations get intense and further explained in the second half. It suddenly surprises and even shocks the viewer out of nowhere, at a moment when it seemed to be running out of everything. It starts climbing from there, towards a good, justified climax and a fine finish. That wouldn’t make the first half bad though, as it never really failed in a collateral manner even in the beginning stages as some might have thought it to be. There are shades of what might happen in the second half right from the beginning itself. The essence of mystery never leaves the little world of this movie. It leaves some scratches for the audience to be in the hunt for the mystery. The creepy house and the strange surroundings are supported by a bath tub, bathroom sink and the shower acting in a supernatural way.

The most exciting question of the movie would be if there is a murder which would justify the title? The second movie had lots of bloody murders, but this one is more of a psychological murder. There is the murder of faith and trust, and there is the possiblity of one or two murders which might have happened in the end – that is an ambiguity, an ending which could be interpreted in more than one way. It might be an end with the death of two, death of one and the imprisonment of the other, or with nothing too bad happening in the mansion. Love continues to be a matter of life, death, horror, mental disorder and everything else, and its role is above the supernatural yet again. It might reach even bigger heights of the mind in a possible Murder 4. What we see in the movie is that redemption is attained by the ones who has taken them out of the attention of fake, carnal love. The rest are left to feel the heat. Well, there is beauty to the heat, and gorgeousness to the horror – not one, but two; for there is no way to deny that.

Sara Loren and Aditi Rao Hydari has made this one more of a movie centred on two women, almost entirely different, but still has their lives centred on one man. The former keeps the first half running with her stunning looks while the latter runs the second half. The female characters run from sympathy to seduction and possessiveness to torment, a journey which is independent from one another, but not entirely separated in the sequence of events. Both of them begin as simple victims to an infatuation which drives them to one man and the creepy mansion. It is only a matter time before the love-birds would be no less than the vultures of selfishness. As it continues to bring more and more questions into the heads of the viewers, the more successful it becomes. But still, there are the missing parts, for the movie has its own low points where its horror becomes kind of laughable. But that is something worth forgiving for the total effect, especially for the minutes towards the end of the movie.

Thinking about the most talked-about side of the movie, this is not exactly the erotic thriller. There is sensousness and the scarcity in the department of clothing could be taken into account. But this actually takes the elements of relationships and mental status to the new heights instead of the physical relationships. This time, it gets closer to the emotions even if the skinshow never loses its role in the movie. The philosophy might be mostly hidden, but the absence of a true villain or a true hero is the evidence of the fact that this is more open to the discussions than ever, unlike the previous two movies of the series. That adds to the absence of Emraan Hashmi as a new thing to the series. In simple words, what Murder 3 has done is that it has provided some proof that there is hope around here for the horror genre even without ghosts and serial killers; there is future in many forms, and this future is more than just stunning.

Release date: 15th February 2013
Running time: 120 minutes
Directed by: Vishesh Bhatt
Starring: Randeep Hooda, Aditi Rao Hydari, Sara Loren, Rajesh Shringarpure, Shekhar Shukla